This book critically examines the COVID-19 pandemic and its legal and biological governance using a multidisciplinary approach. The perspectives reflected in this volume investigate the imbrications between technosphere and biosphere at social, economic, and political levels. The biolegal dimensions of our evolving understanding of “home” are analysed as the common thread linking the problem of zoonotic diseases and planetary health with that of geopolitics, biosecurity, bioeconomics and biophilosophies of the plant-animal-human interface. In doing so, the contributions collectively highlight the complexities, challenges, and opportunities for humanity, opening new perspectives on how to inhabit our shared planet. This volume will broadly appeal to scholars and students in anthropology, cultural and media studies, history, philosophy, political science and public health, sociology and science and technology studies.
Author(s): Vanessa Lemm, Miguel Vatter
Series: Biolegalities
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Year: 2022
Language: English
Pages: 284
City: Singapore
Foreword
Acknowledgments
Contents
List of Contributors
Introduction
Part I: Biosecurity and Planetary Health
Cryopolitics of SARS-CoV-2: Biosecurity in Laboratories and Wet Markets
The Hypothesis of Imported Frozen Products
The Wet Market Hypothesis
The Hypothesis of the Laboratory Accident
References
From Global to Planetary Health: Two Morphologies of Pandemic Preparedness
International to Global Health
The Global Virome
COVID-19: A Success for Global Health Security?
From Influenza Epicenter to Planetary Health
Two Morphologies: From Global to Planetary Health
References
COVID-19 and the Contradictions of Planetary Health: Envisioning New Paradigms
The Problem with Plastics
Lifting the Veil on Food System Pathologies
Revisioning the ‘Planetary’ and the ‘Health’ in Planetary Health
Conclusion
References
Part II: Bio-social Dimensions of Public Health
A Foucauldian Moment or the Longue Durée? COVID-19 in Context
On the Politics of Time in Biopolitical Narratives
Silent Chronologies at Work in Social Theory
Counter-Histories and the Will to Ignore Them
Plural Regimes of Biopolitics in Deep Time
Conclusion: COVID-19, the Premodern/Modern Boundary, and the Epigenetics of History
References
Zoonoses and Medicine as Social Science: Implications of Rudolf Virchow’s Work for Understanding Global Pandemics
Rudolf Virchow’s Social Understanding of Disease
Social Medicine
Cellular Pathology
Zoonosis
The Role of the Physician
Rethinking Virchow’s Contributions in COVID-19 Times
Conclusion
References
Living in Peace with Coronaviruses
Naming the Novel Coronavirus SARS-CoV-2
Beyond the Biosecurity Paradigm
Virology After the Cold War
Viruses as Terrorists, Zombies, and Symbionts
Conclusion: Only the Minority Suffer
References
Part III: Social Distancing and Community
The Micropolitics of Social Distancing: Habit, Contagion and the Suggestive Realm
Habits, Humans and Infrastructures
The Suggestive Realm and Contagion
Conclusion
References
Visceral Publics and Social Power: Crowd Politics in the Time of a Pandemic
The Social Body and the Physical Crowd
Governmentality and the Capture of the Social
References
Ideologies of Contagion and Communities of Life
Contagious Ideologies: Hope for an ‘Aufbruch’ Toward a New Revolution
Dangerous Infection: The Return of Humanism
Diagnosing Sickness: The Future of an Illusion
Communities of Life
References
Part IV: Pandemic Neoliberalism
Contradictions of the Bailout State
Introduction
Capital’s Democracy
Reframing the Keynesian Welfare State
From Welfare to Bailout State
Conclusion
References
The Neoliberal Virus
Rethinking Everything
The Neoliberal State of Nature
An Anthropocene Disease
Epidemic Frontiers
Speculative Natures
References
Part V: Pandemic Habitats
Biometric Re-bordering: Environmental Control During Pandemic Times
Biometric Borders During Pandemic Times
Digital Enclosures
Expanding Borders and the Grand Disaggregation
Metagovernance: Post-Disciplinary Modalities of Control
Environmentality
References
Planetary Health and the Biopolitics of Home
Introduction
Political Space and Conceptions of Home
The Planetary Dimension and Its Biopolitics
From Habitability to Milieu and Back
Technosphere, Sensory Society, and Manhattan Principles of One Health
Pandemic Bordering and the Biolegality of Mobility
References
Creative Responses to COVID-19
Part I: It Comes in Waves
Part II: The Cure
References
Index
